fresco

I've always wondered about "grilled to perfection." Does this mean that your main course started out as a substantard lump of merde but was, through the talented intervention of the kitchen, made perfect?

Comfort food (causes discomfort) Convenience food (isn't) Health food (says who?)

Tommy, Rachael Ray has her detractors, but her (unintentional) entertainment value is very high.

Jaymes, Well, then...not just a nice lunch, but an education, too. Bonus.

Jaymes, Aren't you glad you asked?

Translations of popular (and misleading) food terms may be worth a thread all by itself: Fresh--Anything up to and including several days (or weeks) old but not putrid enough to attract the attention of health inspectors. Home-style cooking--As long as you include prisons and other such institutions in the definition of "home." Etc.

Happy hour.

I understand that "lobster sauce" refers to a style, rather than an ingredient, but still think it is misleading. "Lobster-style" sauce would be accurate.

"From an old family recipe" (that I stole from a book/magazine/the last place I worked)

"in lobster sauce." (Never been near a lobster.)

Jumbo shrimp (both oxymoron and often false on restaurant menus.)

Hot coffee. Cold beer.

"No cholesteral" (Often on stuff that never, under any circumstances, need contain any)

Desperation=unrivalled flavour enhancer.

My favorite is " fresh frozen."

The Trans-Canada Highway is pure magic if you happen to love Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Harvey's, Tim Horton's, Swiss Chalet, or increasingly, some combination of the above. Given the choices, there are two things I look for most: restrooms, and my destination.

And another thing: when is something cuisine, and when is it just plain cooking? According to the dictionary, "cuisine" is a characteristic method or approach to cooking, but that somehow doesn't capture it. Perhaps my biases are showing, but "cuisine" sounds right when paired with, say, French or Italian, but not with, say, Greek or southern. And every jumped-up fry cook in existence can be heard spouting off about his own (rarely her own) "cuisine."

Tommy, What exactly did you start drinking at age 28?

Alacarte, The Boston Globe's piece on what to get a Dad who cooks bears an uncanny resemblance to the condescending stuff that used to pour forth from newspapers in advance of Mother's Day... http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/162/food...he_stove+.shtml

From the Haggis Haiku site: http://users.aol.com/tychocat/web/haggishaiku.html "McDonald's haggis? Tis aye mickle guid until much dosed with ketchup"

"A Big Mac tastes for a hell of a lot worse then a decent haggis." Someone named McDonald should open a haggis shop and adopt this as their motto.

Nope. Planning to read Cod. This may be the exception, but compendiums which follow a best-selling book often disappoint, because they are cobbled together from a bunch of dispirate stuff a writer has already published, too often less out of interest than to satisfy the demands of an editor or to keep food on the table. If Salt has not exhausted you on the subject, you may want to try Charcuterie by your own Jane Grigson, which is both beautifully written and now a standard text on the subject in France. And for a truly daunting exploration of cod (and a great, ground breaking work of history) I recommend The Cod Fishery, by Harold Innis.

Read it a few weeks ago. He did a great job of making an apparently unpromising subject fascinating reading. Must have been a tough sell to a publisher, even after cod.

I have a hard time getting worked up about being served a glass of water, but have noticed that the practice began disappearing just about the same time as the rise in popularity of the bottled stuff. Now that "free" glass of water costs $6 or $8.

What you get for 1.32 pounds in schools today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/educati...ion/2976010.stm